Music Video Treatment

I approached 3-piece Nottingham band Kagoule http://www.myspace.com/kagouleuk through a mutual friend on Facebook. Their music has been self-described by the band as being "a coming together of 90′s grunge and modern indie rock'n'roll". I explained that we are making a music video for college and we would like to direct a video of one of their songs. They have released an EP called “Son”, so I asked them what song they would like us to direct a video for. After getting back to me, and telling me they would be delighted to participate, they said that the video that they would most like to see with a music video was “Made of Concrete”. I was ecstatic as this was my favourite song of theirs, after following their music for a while and having seen them live recently at The Maze pub in Nottingham.

The soft guitar riff in the song is very dreamy and surreal. The lyrics seem to follow themes of love and urban decay. I intend to splice a narrative with footage of the band performing, which they have kindly agreed to do. We will shoot in their rehearsal space, which will give the performance a raw intensity. The narrative we be quite surreal and futuristic. I will describe it in full as if it will not be mixed with the performance.

As the video opens we see a man in casual clothes walking down a street. He looks quite morose and depressed. He stuffs his hand in his pocket and pulls out a scrunched up piece of paper. And, unscrewing it, he sees an address hastily wrote on it, followed by a note, which reads: “Feeling unfulfilled? I have the cure.” He looks up at the near dilapidated building, confused. He cautiously walks inside.

He finds a man in a white lab coat, sitting sipping coffee. He questions the man as to whether he is responsible for the note. Nodding, he leads the man into a dark, dank bunker-like structure. The place is filled with books, tools, and high-tech electronics and in the centre, a machine with wires sat next to a chair.

Next, we see the central character being sat down, and connected to the machine by the man in the lab coat. He connects a wire going from an amplifier into the man’s wrist, and into his bloodstream. Various other wires, one going to the man’s chest, to check his heart beat is also connected. The premise of the idea is pure fantasy, and suggests that the machine can cure sadness and depression through sending musical airwaves and other shock treatment to reset the brain’s mind-set to follow paths set out by previous happy memories.

The process of doing this is similar to Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” (1971) where a young delinquent who commits rape and murder is strapped to a chair and made to listen to his favourite symphony of music while he watches awful acts of violent atrocity on a huge cinema screen. This is will be my attempt at intertextuality.

As the treatment is being administered the man finds true happiness in his past memories. When it is over, the man feels fulfilled. He asks if he can come back. The owner of the machine tells him it can only be administered once. The machine has its faults however as the man adjusts back into normal life. He feels the happiness pumping through his veins begin to diminish. The man goes back to the building, and finding the place locked up, and in a fit of desperation, he decides to break in. Upon doing so, he finds that the place is utterly empty. The owner of the machine was right: it could only be used one time.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with idea of the narrative. I think that it is quite an original idea, considering a lot of music videos contain themes of love. I also like the fantasy, futuristic element to it – the idea that you can only use the machine once to fulfil your life, and if you are unable to achieve happiness you cannot use it again.